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UNITED NATIONS — While the United Nations debates how it can restructure around future urbanization, planners and urbanists continue to go to work on the front lines of that process today. They are developing building codes, coming up with land... Read more

Editor's Note: The Communist Party of China has just concluded its 19th National Congress in Beijing. China Daily asked business leaders from major multinational companies for their views on economic developments here and the country's global leadership role.
Lim Yoke Loon is Greater China president of The Dow Chemical Company, the second-largest chemical firm in the world and based in the United States.
What have been the most encouraging signs about the Chinese economy this year?
The country has stepped into the era of the "new normal" where GDP (gross domestic product) growth is measured... Read more

When it comes to the age-old negotiation between local and national governments, African Centre for Cities co-founder Susan Parnell sees two extremes.
On the one side are those who believe that cities have all the answers, and that if they were just unshackled from the rules set out by national governments, they could provide robust economies and just societies for all. That vision is crystallized in the late Benjamin Barber’s book “If Mayors Ruled the World.”
On the other side are the staunch multilateralists, who believe that postwar institutions such as the United Nations — by definition a... Read more

NAIROBI, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Africa is in a crucial time and the successful story of China in linking urbanization and development would be a source of learning for the continent, Joan Clos, executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), told Xinhua in an interview on Tuesday.
With an average GDP per capita of around 2,000 U.S. dollars, the current economic picture in Africa was a little bit like what China was when it initiated the opening-up process in 1978, he said.
"Africa has a huge demand for development, with a young population searching for a better... Read more

UNITED NATIONS — While the United Nations debates how it can restructure around future urbanization, planners and urbanists continue to go to work on the front lines of that process today. They are developing building codes, coming up with land-use plans and debating zoning changes — the bureaucratic but essential tasks that shape how cities develop and grow.
Their needs are at the forefront of Peter Calthorpe’s mind. The San Francisco-based urbanist is principal of Calthorpe Associates, an urban planning and design firm, and a founding member of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Calthorpe... Read more

Jonathan Andrews spoke to Victor Splittgerber, CTO & Co-Founder, Green City Solutions, about a new form of urban street furniture that ‘eats’ pollution at the pedestrian level
How does it work?
Green City Solutions addresses the global problem of air pollution by combining a special, vertical installed moss culture with Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology. Called the CityTree, it combines specific plants that eat particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide and ozone–offsetting 240 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per year in total. The plant filter has the same effect as up to 275 urban trees, but... Read more

In planning circles, “resilience” often refers to the ability of urban systems to bounce back from environmental shock. On that front, Tulsa, Oklahoma, has its work cut out, ensuring utilities and emergency services have the resources to withstand 130-mph tornadoes whipping through the city.
But to DeVon Douglass, Tulsa’s Chief Resilience Officer, resilience is ultimately about the strength of citizens themselves—a tenacity, she says, that starts with individuals and spans out to society.
Appointed by Mayor GT Bynum in December 2016, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient... Read more

As cities boom around the world, so will the number of people who study them. With the ranks of university urbanism, planning, architecture and design programmes swelling, especially with students from some of the rapidly urbanizing corners of the world, new teaching points might be in order.
That was the conclusion of Roberto Rocco, assistant professor in the Department of Urbanism at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Recently at TU Delft, as it’s known, Rocco convened a conversation to ask whether last year’s voluntary global agreement on urbanization could offer... Read more

Tackling any one of the United Nations’ ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, much less all 17, is a gargantuan task.
But ask planner Martin Dubbeling, and he thinks his profession has many of the answers. Vice-president of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP), the Dutch planning consultant has been an on-the-ground adviser for UN-Habitat’s urban planning missions in challenging environments such as Gaza, Kabul, Nairobi and the West Bank. He also has worked extensively throughout China and his native Netherlands.
His career experience has made him a forceful... Read more

How can cities ensure that new actions being taken to mitigate climate change don’t negatively affect broader issues of equity?
Likewise, how does a multinational company prove that a sustainable urban development project it is investing in is having a significant local impact — and global ramifications?
This week, a new option is available to try to answer some of these questions. The Gold Standard, a Switzerland-based group created in 2003, on Monday published the new Standard for Sustainable Urban Development. It’s a rigorous framework that offers not only detailed guidance on how to plan... Read more

Nick Michell spoke to Mercedes Vidal Lago, Councillor for Mobility in Barcelona, about the city’s plans to reduce car journeys and encourage increased walking and cycling
How much of a problem is air pollution in Barcelona in relation to motorised-vehicles?
Today Barcelona clearly exceeds the thresholds recommended by the World Health Organization both for nitrogen dioxide and particles, especially in terms of average levels of these pollutants in the atmosphere.
Air pollution not only causes more than 650 premature deaths annually in Barcelona, but also represents the deterioration in the... Read more